-The Hindu   The Full Commission of the National Human Rights Commission will hear on Monday a petition filed by some Kerala MPs alleging a “threat to life and liberty” of the people of the State and seeking its intervention in the Mullaperiyar dam row. The MPs, including P.T. Thomas and K.P. Dhanapalan (both Congress) and Jose K. Mani (Kerala Congress-M), claimed that the entire State was panic-stricken over the possible collapse of...

Seek adequate compensation from Carbide, Dow Chemical On the 27th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy on Saturday, victims and survivors, still waiting for relief, will register their protest by launching an indefinite rail roko andolan (stop trains). “On December 3, please don't travel by train. Change your reservations now. We are sorry to cause you inconvenience but stopping the trains is the only effective way we can think of to get...

Has India done a China to its trade partners? Against huge opposition and popular discontent over the years, the Cabinet last week cleared 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail and allowed 100 per cent FDI in single-brand retail. The move appears crafty in that it tries to change the perception of a reform impasse in the government while simultaneously aiding India’s negotiators to meet their peers...

Thirty-four-year-old Praseetha Dineshan from Kattipara panchayat in Kozhikode used to work as a postwoman delivering letters from 8 am to 5.30 pm. No longer.  After completing a training course of Coconut Development Board (CDB) for climbing coconut tree using a machine, she has now quit her temporary job and is happy to climb coconut trees to pluck coconuts. "Yesterday I climbed 15 trees and today I did 20. More and more people...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...